1932
Mr. Frank Nagel Carleton's remark about the emptiness of The ALUMNI MAGAZINE Newsbank is well founded, and I open these columns with a repetition of my hope that you men who are doing hero's jobs on the domestic or foreign fronts will deposit to your own credit a few items on how it feels to be doing whatever you are doing. You don't even have to be a hero—only a fellow who is getting used to a new uniform, a new job, a new child, a new wife, a new consciousness of what the world means when you put part of it together.
Reuel Denney, where is a new poem that we could print? Rod Hatcher, what about that whale you' mistook for an Unterseeboot? Sam Englander how does it feel to be in Australia now that April's there? Ed Cummings, where do you hang your Navy cap? Walt Zeigenfuss, what's new in the City of Brotherly Love? Amby Cram, how long have you been awearin' of the 0.D.? Al McKenzie, what was involved in the shift from radio to radiation which you recently made?
Where are the snows of yesteryear—the snows of letters, I mean, which used to descend on this column? That kind of snow would be welcome. We started with the idea of a bank and have worked out to the idea of snow. Maybe the snowbank was lingering in the subconscious all the time, for outside my office a north wind doth blow, and it may even bring snow, and what will my carrot-seeds do then?
There is a modicum of military news this month, but I think you will agree upon reading it that what there is of it is good. We're getting quite a flock of captains. Now take the situation up there to Rome (N. Y.) Air Depot. They tell me that way back at the end of the first week in March, Lt. James D. North industrial relations officer at that Depot was promoted to a captaincy. Jim and Margaret and son Dan live at 609 Elm Street, Rome. Hurray for Captain North! Hurray also for Lt. Colonel Whitehair, who recently achieved that rank, and can be congratulated by writing to 3315 Milverton Rd., Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Hurray also for Captain Nathan H. Wentworth, recently commissioned by the Army for a special job. Bo may be overseas before this appears, but now (early April) he is on the verge. And thereby hangs a tale. By the end of the first week in April, Bo had collected a grand total of 222 duespayments for the Class of 1932, a record for which he is to be heartily congratulated, as is the class which supported him in this excellent achievement. Among other things this means that every member of the class, wherever he is, will receive a copy of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE (and they tell me it's darned welcome in North Africa, the Solomons, India, and Australia, as well as the various other A.P.O. points which it reaches). Bo's collective instincts also mean that the class has now saved up a potential contribution to the Twenty-fifth Reunion Fund, a contribution that ought to do a little growing in the next fourteen years or so. It is, however, necessary to end the congratulations on a doleful note: Bo's entry into the AUS will make it impossible for him to carry on as Class Treasurer, and he has resigned the post, which is our loss and the AUS's gain, as the saying runs.
While we're still on money and congratulations, some should go to Class Agent Bill Morton—some money and congratulations both. With the assistance of a corps of sub-agents which is rapidly taking shape, Bill had garnered by the Ides of March a total contribution in excess of $500 from something under fifty classmates. Merry Merry May is the time to come through with your Fund check if you haven't already done so. Meantime, Bill is hard at his thankless work of putting the class over the top.
Bill's able running-mate, Joe Carleton, editor of the 1932 Newsletter, is the subject of a limerick recently submitted by an anonymous author, who by his own wish must remain nameless, though literary detectives are at liberty to guess his identity from the fact that he is a tall, dark, handsome guy with the initials, EBMJr. Joe Carleton, known to his closest friends as The Beagle, recently entered the law offices of the firm of Hausserman, Davison, and Shattuck. Says the scribe:
Oh, Hausserman, Davison, Shattuck In the land of the cod and the hattuck, With briefs penned by Beagle, Your new legal-eagle, Your affairs will no longer be stattuck.
Adds the scribe, "If that doesn't suit you, try thematic, dramatic, attic, morganatic, emphatic, ecstatic, etc." I would like to accept the challenge of our anonymous contributor, but my limerick-maker up and bust last week, and I can't get the spare parts to put it in running-order again. However, the sentiment of the limerick is such that no classmate would be inclined to disagree, particularly after watching the Beagle's classic handling of the K's English in his magnificent Newsletters.
All things come to him who reads his mail, and I am in recent receipt of a very nice letter from Mr. Hart Fessenden, who is the man to see if you have any little boys you want to send to boarding school. Mr. Fessenden thinks it would be nice if I'd pass on to classmates the statement that The Fessenden School is in West Newton, Mass., that the school covers grades 1-8 inclusive, that the boys in Grades 5 and below are often day students, though about 25 of that group are boarders under careful supervision. Grades 6-8 contain about a hundred boarders, together with some day students.
Miss Helen Wilson Lannberg became the wife of Lt. Robert L. Harrison at St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Essex Fells, N. J., on March 20. On hand to serve as ushers were three classmates, John and Gus Zimmerman, of Amityville, L. 1., and Ridgewood, N. J. respectively, and Capt. Bo Wentworth of Boston and points east. Bo reports it was a first-rate splicin', and that the bride and groom left for a New Orleans honeymoon after which they will live at Hondo, Texas, where Bob is an instructor in avigation for the AAF. Well, we hain't run out of congratulations yet!
Prize-letter of the month has just come through from Don Marcus, stationed at an A.P.O. address somewhere north of Presque Isle, Me.:
"Life up here," types Don, pausing to explain that he is at a secret base, and can only speak of it as "here." "Life up here continues in the same old path—l might almost say rut. It seems that even the seasons remain static. (Ed.'s note: spelled stattuck). The calendar, of which the Varga girl edition is standard equipment, says that spring has been here a couple of weeks, but no one could guess it from the weather. We have at least one faithful re-enactment of the Blizzard of '88 each week. The only concession to spring is the lengthening days. We have only about eight hours of darkness now, so that in a couple of months the old saying about the land of the midnight sun will emerge as a reality. . . . .To break up the routine, we went out hunting last week, but failed to bag anything. We stalked through the woods on our snow shoes tracking game, but they always eluded us and we never got a shot at anything all the time we were out And so life slowly marches on. And to coin a new phrase, if any '32ers are in the vicinity, tell them to drop in and have a drink. Heh! Heh!" Thirsty class detectives who are good at climatology, geography, and snow-shoeing may be able to accept Don's invitation. I wouldn't know where to find him except by mail: A.P.O. 677, Presque Isle.
Lt. George Pettengill is somewhere in the Pacific area aboard a war-ship as Supply Officer. In at a Pacific coast port recently for a ship-refitting, George reported that intercourse and intoxication were still popular with personnel, but what really made Tojo tremble, said George, was the U. S. Fleet of sea and air. "As soon as we get to sea and contact the Jap fleet, they will lose all their marbles and the war in the Pacific will be over," says George, wryly. If anybody can swipe Tojo's agate, Pett is the man.
That empties this month's newsbank. Happy Decoration Day! Time to harvest your small green onions and get the corn into the ground.
Secretary, 210 Moore St., Princeton, N. J. Class Agent, Stratton Road, New Rochelle, N. Y.
